Did Sylvia Plath want kids?

The Bell Jar's Esther didn't, but had them anyway

While writing my doctoral thesis, I spent many hours wondering how Sylvia Plath felt about being a mother. Of course she wrote beautiful poetry about motherhood, and her letters contain a mix of emotions about the early days of motherhood. But I chose to focus exclusively on her novel, The Bell Jar, and how it portrays a young woman’s perception of motherhood. Since today is the 61st anniversary of her death, I thought I’d share an essay on the novel.

As a quick summary, the novel was published in 1963 and is narrated by Esther, widely considered to be a version of Plath, who in retrospect tells us about her experiences in her early twenties while she worked for a magazine in New York City, worried about her future and suffered a mental health emergency.

Esther is deeply conflicted about motherhood; she sometimes expresses a desire for children, but she fears childbirth and the potential loss of a career as a poet. In her world, it was not possible to do both. It is important to note that Esther is a privileged young woman with access to mental health care and other medical care, as well as the recipient of a funded internship in New York City, therefore the complications she faces would be slight in comparison to a person from a marginalized group.

Plath’s letters indicate she enjoyed her babies and childbirth, but the conflict she describes is distilled in the character Esther, who is preoccupied with how pregnancy might affect her aspirations to become a professional poet.